Montana Quilters Have Their Own License Plate. And So Does Everyone Else.

Montana Quilters Have Their Own License Plate

The curious rise of specialty tags.

America’s highways are like Walt Whitman: They contain multitudes. America’s twin obsessions—being yourself and driving yourself—have given us the Hummer and the Prius, generational tides of nodding dogs and fuzzy dice, the Gucci edition of the AMC Hornet and those 3-inch by 12-inch windows onto the nebulous depths of our fellow motorists known as bumper stickers. In a culture that celebrates autonomy, self-promotion, and perpetual motion, my car is a song of myself.

Most recently, our penchant for motor-vehicular self-expression has fueled a bumper crop of specialty license plates. Many raise eyebrows—and all raise questions. How did specialty plates get started? Why the recent boom? Who approves the designs? And are they harmless—or yet another symptom of too much pluribus and not enough unum?

First, a quick terminology lesson: “Specialty” plates promote a cause, identity, or group (like turtles, or the Marines) often in exchange for a higher fee (from about $10 to about $100) that’s channeled to an appropriate government agency or nonprofit group. “Vanity” plates are different. They feature personalized configurations: GR8INBED, YODA-I-AM, NO1LKSU.

It’s easy to see these plates as a uniquely American sort of whack-jobbery. After all, few countries permit even vanity plates (in many countries, of course, plates stay with the car when it’s sold). Only Australia and Canada—the other two continent-straddling, car-crazy former British colonies—allow American-style specialty plates, and far fewer than we do. Even in America—though we can design our own stamps—we don’t personalize our driving licenses, birth certificates, or passports. Why license plates?

Department of Revenue State of Mississippi.

First, the history. According to Jeff Minard, ALPCA’s historian, specialty tags for qualified motorists—ham radio operators (who performed a sort of pre-cell-phone-era neighborhood watch) and veterans (of World War I, and even the Spanish-American War)—were first issued in Michigan in the 1930s.

ALPCA.

The first publicly available, special-fee plates appeared around America’s bicentennial celebrations, when many states offered bicentennial plates, and three states charged extra to help fund their celebrations. Next came Maryland’s pay-for-plate 350th anniversary and California’s profitable 1984 Los Angeles Olympics tag, and then the specialty plate that’s widely, erroneously considered the first: Florida’s 1987 plate that memorialized the Challenger shuttle astronauts.

Richard Dragon.

So what’s behind the specialty-plate profusion? As for so much else, we can thank cash-strapped state governments, focus-group politics, and reduced barriers to entry. States raise extra funds from specialty plates, and benefit directly (if the fee goes to a state agency) or indirectly (if the fee goes to a nonprofit). For politicians, championing specialty plates constitutes a kind of free (or profitable, even) patronage and tokenism. But perhaps the biggest factor in the specialty-plate boom, says ALPCA’s Jeff Minard, has been new digital presses, which can cheaply, quickly print an essentially unlimited library of plates.

Maryland department of transportation motor vehicle administration.

Originally, license plates were embossed—stamped so that the characters physically stood out from the background. Graphics first appeared on plates starting in the 1940s, but they were originally applied as decals. Silkscreened graphics debuted on South Dakota’s award-winning 1974 Mt. Rushmore plate. Digital presses, which can print virtually anything onto an entirely flat, non-embossed plate, got their start in New York in the mid-1990s. Their quick spread in the early 2000s has enabled the current specialty plate boom. As more states switch over—despite readability concerns and fractious font debates—the future of license plates looks bright, digital, and ever more specialized.

Richard Dragon.

In the era of the digital press, specialty license plates have flourished. Environmental plates are big: Hummingbirds find favor inland, while coastal types love whales (their photogenic tails, if not their lumpy, barnacled, beady-eyed heads). Georgia has a curious spay-and-neuter plate that features a cat and dog eyeing each other inside a heart-shaped peach. Monty Burns-types can opt for a soot-colored "Friend of Coal" plate, or memorialize nuclear testing. I haven’t found a pro-oil license plate—but then, perhaps the car speaks for itself.

Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles.

Veteran plates aren’t new. But now, each service and theater seems to have its own specific tags. Pearl Harbor plates are available only to those who were in situ, or up to three miles offshore, between 7:55 a.m. and 9:45 a.m. on the fateful day. Qualifying service for Cold War plates ended with the Soviet Union on Dec. 26, 1991, while eligibility for war on terror plates encompasses post-9/11 service in the global war on terror—or, perhaps fittingly, “any future conflict.”

CREDIT: Arkansas Department of Finance and Administration.

It’s only natural that America’s cultural warriors, too, would hit the highway. Plates about hot-button topics are common, and commonly contested. Check out Florida’s Sunshine State Jesus proposal—and the inevitable pagan counterproposal. Or this proposal for a cross-laden Texas plate. There are 7,200 long miles between the Hill of Calvary and, um, Corpus Christi; for those who prefer a little more church-state separation, there’s South Carolina’s “In Reason We Trust” tag.

CREDIT: Arizona Department of Transportation.

Not all of these controversial plates make it onto the road. Florida’s Sunshine State Jesus plate made it through the State Senate—but no further. Texas’ cross plate did make the cut. What gets on a plate depends on the state. Designs were originally promulgated legislatively, and often still are. In some states, though, nonprofits can simply submit a design for DMV approval, along with a deposit or advance orders. Texas has a particularly liberal regime: Anyone—even an individual or a for-profit group—can step up.

CREDIT: ACLU.

What gets on a plate also depends on judges. Specialty plates have kept them busy, particularly regarding religious and abortion-related tags. But courts still haven’t decided who is “speaking” on a license plate, the government or the motorist? It makes a big difference. If the government is speaking, it can say most anything. But it doesn’t have to say everything—a problem for those who want a plate that their state doesn’t. The government must also abide various constitutional restrictions: For example, it can’t favor one religion over another. If, on the other hand, the motorist is speaking, then that speech is protected, and almost anything goes. Brigitte Amiri, a lawyer for the ACLU, told me “courts have generally held that these plates are some hybrid of private and government speech,” but different courts have come up with different tests, so plates available in some jurisdictions are illegal in others.

This legal confusion sounds like a job for the Supreme Court, but ever since the entertaining 1977 case of a New Hampshirite who wasn’t happy with the options presented by the state’s classic “Live Free or Die” plate, the justices have steered clear of license plate cases. Which means the lower-court contradictions stand. Perhaps that’s not a bad state(s) of affairs. It’s likely no one would be pleased by a national ruling that locked plate approvals entirely in the hands of partisan governments, nor one that unleashed fully protected individual “plate speech.”

Stripey the crab via Wikimedia Commons.

Of course, specialty plates already give voice to divisive impulses in American society. Illinois long ago issued an Obama plate; the Tea Party is pushing a tag in South Carolina; and even a plate honoring Superman proved contentious when a recent proposal named Ohio, not Krypton, as his birthplace.

CREDIT: Plain Dealer.

The proliferation of controversial plates (not to mention plate-fee scandals and safety fears) can seem particularly unfortunate for a phenomenon born from such moments of national unity as the bicentennial and the Challenger disaster. But if you survey the entire landscape of specialty plates, they can start to look less like obituaries for the republic and more like monuments to our shared values of freedom, outspoken individuality and mutual respect.

Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles.

Here’s a heartening only-in-America tale: Americans United, the church-state separation group that successfully challenged a previous, legislature-sponsored Christian plate in South Carolina (on behalf of Christian clergy and Arab and Hindu groups), is fine with the state’s new “I Believe” Christian plate because it was sponsored privately, under a truly neutral process. And now a Palmetto State secularist can opt for the state’s humanist tag, while his gay neighbor can snag an “SC Equality” plate. In Texas, three of the five best-selling plates are environmentally themed; Virginia has a pro-choice plate, and Massachusetts a “Choose Life” one. Indiana briefly offered America’s first plate to support gay youth.

www.ibelievesc.net.

I’ve described America’s bumper-to-bumper chaos to numerous foreign friends, and every one of them had the same reaction—mystification—and the same suggestion: Just ban the whole lot. Perhaps that’s the best reason to keep specialty plates. America remains unique: Nowhere else does this much diversity work anywhere near this well. A quarter-billion beloved cars, 50 states, thousands of plates (or go propose your own): It’s hard to imagine a better tapestry of America’s collective individuality.

CREDIT: Arizona Department of Transportation.

Anyway, no politician or judge would be dumb enough to try to take away our specialty plates now. When I lived in Massachusetts, I splurged on a whale-tailed tag for my very first car (yes, yes, an old Saab 900; I wasn’t shattering any stereotypes). When I moved away, the RMV told me to return my precious plate. After careful consideration, I opted instead for civil disobedience. It’s on my bookcase today. If they want it, let their faceless, jackbooted bureaucrats come and get it. Let them pry it from my cold, dead hands.